Page 121 of My Irresistible Enemy

Nolan’s mom came to visit two days later.

All filming had wrapped up. Aisha and Lucinda had gone home. So had Vivian, and Tanner had been gone since Friday. All that remained was a skeleton crew of producers and editors cutting together the final episode, and a couple of lawyers from the network who’d flown in over the weekend to do damage control.

The tents were gone. The equipment littering the inn’s hallways had been packed up. You’d hardly know there’d been a TV show filming there at all, except for the divots in the grass that dotted the backyard. That, and the occasional production assistant who hustled down to the kitchen to grab more coffee for the editors still working upstairs in one of the Wisteria’s guest rooms.

Nolan borrowed Deacon’s truck to pick his mom up at the ferry. My heart swelled and nearly burst as I watched him open the door for her and walk her up to the porch. He was so careful, so gentle, placing an arm around her shoulders, his eyes never leaving her face.

She gave him a smile that saidyou know I don’t actually need this much tending. His answering one saidI know, but let me do it anyway. She reached up and patted his face, and he flushed. He didn’t remove his arm, though.

A whole conversation without any words. It made me ache, in a good way. Whatever had happened in their past, they had each other moving forward.

“Aiden!” she exclaimed when I jogged down the steps to meet them. “You’re even more handsome in person. I’m Erin. Give me a hug.”

She broke away from Nolan and threw her arms wide, then wrapped them around me and squeezed when I came forward. I glanced at Nolan over her shoulder, and he gave me a rueful smile. When I pulled back, she pinched my cheek.

“Oh, I’ve been wanting to do that for ages.” She grinned. “I’m so happy Nolan got his head on straight and realized what a prize you are. You know, I told him as much, back when the show first started. I told him he needed to snap you up while he still had a chance.”

“Really?” I looked at Nolan speculatively, and his cheeks got even pinker. “How fascinating.”

Erin laughed. “I think my exact words were something along the lines of you having a very cute—”

“Mom!” Nolan interjected, his cheeks bright red now. “Can you not objectify my boyfriend within thirty seconds of meeting him?”

“Okay, okay!” She held her hands up. “I’ll stop. But it islovelyto finally meet you, Aiden. I feel like I know you a bit already, after watching you from home all these weeks, but I look forward to seeing more of you now.”

I beamed at her. “Me too. I want to hear all sorts of embarrassing stories about Nolan when he was younger.”

“Oh, well if you want embarrassing, let me tell you about—”

“Later,” Nolan cut in again. “I think humiliating me can wait until we’ve at least gotten your bags inside, can’t it?”

Erin rolled her eyes. “Spoilsport.”

Despite her promises to tell me stories, I knew Nolan wanted time alone with his mom, so I gave them space for the rest of the afternoon. I caught sight of them a few times, walking through the grounds of the Wisteria or sitting in the backyard, deep in conversation.

At one point, I saw them through the window in my room, talking under the big live oak. Erin reached out and stroked Nolan’s cheek like she was wiping a tear from his eye. He hugged her tightly to his chest.

I stepped back from the window after that. They deserved their privacy. And I had a meeting to get to anyway.

We had dinner together, though, and when I tried to get up from the table to clean up after, Erin pulled me back down into my chair.

“One of the silver linings of being sick,” she said with a conspiratorial smile, “is getting out of doing chores you don’t want to do.”

“Yeah, but what’s my excuse?” I asked.

“Easy. You’re caring for a sick old lady. Obviously, you can’t leave my side.”

“You’re not old, Mom,” Nolan said, standing up and stacking our plates. “And with any luck, you won’t be sick much longer either.”

“Then you’d better let me enjoy it while it lasts.” She turned back to me. “Now, let him take care of all of that, and you tell me more about what Nolan was likeoff-camera.”

I knew Nolan had spent most of his childhood living with his grandparents, and that things with his mom had been rocky. But as he and Mal worked in the kitchen, and I chatted with Erin, I couldn’t help wishing my parents had been a little more like her.

Her love for Nolan overflowed. You could hear it in her voice when she talked about him, see it in her eyes whenever he came over to check on us. She was proud of him and made sure he knew it.

“Did you have a good talk with her?” I asked when I crawled into bed that night, exhausted. Nolan had moved into my room so Deacon and Mal could start getting the Wisteria ready for regular guests.

Nolan rolled onto his side to face me. “Yeah. We did.” His hand traced an invisible pattern along my arm. “It was…a lot. She told me that there were some run-ins with social services when I was too young to even remember. Way before I actually—well, before everything happened. It was apparently kind of a ticking time bomb situation.”

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